Creator / Frank Capra

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Francesco Rosario "Frank" Capra (1897–1991) is one of the greatest directors of the 20th century. He was born in Sicily; his family emigrated to the U.S. when he was five. He originally went to Caltech (when it was still known as "Throop College of Technology") for a degree in chemical engineering - the "Capra Ranch" he donated to the university is still used for academic and student retreats. He then got a job making a small film for a couple of guys because he needed the money. That was during a recession in the early 1920s and he had trouble finding work.

From this, Capra did more film work, his chemistry degree long forgotten. Like many pioneer film-makers of the Golden Age, Capra entered cinema at a time when the nascent medium was not yet considered a serious vocation, yet after a steady apprenticeship, quickly became a master and he made some of the greatest films in cinema history.

His first major Hollywood experience was with Hal Roach in the mid 20s writing scripts for Our Gang, and films for Harry Langdon a popular silent comedian of that era though overshadowed by Keaton, Chaplin and Lloyd. From 1928 to 1939 he worked under Columbia Pictures making some of their most successful pictures. This was the era where Capra became famous as "the populist" of the Depression, tackling on a variety of topics and subjects that captured the mood of the public. They were known as "Capraesque" by admirers and fans and "Capra Corn" by critics. They usually featured stories about a "little guy" against a system, a classic trope in American cinema that was largely codified by Capra. Capra also became one of the few film-makers of this era to be known to the public as a director, since he succeeded in putting, as his autobiography notes, "his name above the title". A less savoury aspect of this behaviour was Capra's tendency to hijack credit for the story ideas of his movies from his screenwriting collaborators, namely Robert Riskin.

As his biographer Joseph McBride notes, Capra had a reputation for being a liberal film-maker on account of the populist subjects of his 30s films such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Meet John Doe and others. In actual fact, Capra was a conservative who opposed the New Deal and in the mid-30s an admirer of Mussolini (much like his Columbia boss, Harry Cohn). During the era of the Red Scare, Capra became a FBI informant and testified against many of his collaborators to HUAC who became blacklisted as a result of his actions. Capra did this largely out of self-preservation since the Committee suspected him of Communist sympathies on account of "the leftist" subjects of his 30s films, most of which were chosen by Capra because it was popular with the public rather than any ideological loyalty one way or another. As a director, Capra was more interested in technique and emotion than any real ideological message. Despite his political beliefs, he was active in the Unions In Hollywood and a founding member of the Director's Guild.

When he was drafted in World War II, he produced the Why We Fight set of seven propaganda films for the War Department, to explain what the war meant. (Using the term 'propaganda' in its classic sense, as in public relations material created by and for a government; what he says in the films about the Nazis and the Nationalist Japanese, that they want to take over the world and make everyone else into slaves, is correct. Much of the material was in fact translations of their own propaganda pieces.)

In the mid-1940s, Capra attempted to establish himself as an independent filmmaker by forming his own film company, Liberty Films, in partnership with fellow directors William Wyler and George Stevens. The only two films produced by Liberty Films were It's a Wonderful Life and State of the Union, neither of which was a success (at the time). In the 30s, Capra made 16 feature films, after the war he made 6 films in 15 years, two of which (Broadway Bill and Pocketful of Miracles) were remakes of obscure 30s films, and none of which, with the exception of It's A Wonderful Life regarded among his best films. Capra for his part blamed the Fall of the Studio System, citing the failure of Liberty Films, sold in 1947 to Paramount, as an instance of "the more or less continuous downward slide of Hollywood's artistic and economic fortunes" (from his memoirs). Some of the prominent work as a director in this time was a series of educational documentaries he made for the Bell Laboratory Science Series.

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